Heart and Soul by Sally Mandel

me?”
    â€œI’ll be fine,” I said. “But hey, got any vibes about how this is going to turn out?”
    She closed her eyes and put her hands on either side of my head. “Yeah. You’re going to stay conscious the whole time and you’re going to win.”
    I kissed her good-bye. The truth was, I didn’t like having friends and family around when I was performing. It only made me feel worse, knowing that I was putting them through hell while they waited for me to pass out.
    There were five competitors, an Asian woman, two Russian guys, a New Yorker from the Upper West Side named Ziggy, and me. Ziggy had been in my Music History class and had one green eye and one brown one, which didn’t look in the same direction. He was good. Not great, but good, and for him playing in competitions produced about the same level of stress as doing his laundry. I was slated for second to last. Not as bad as last, but damn close. I sat in the green room, purgatory for me as opposed to the stage, which is hell. I had already passed out in the rest room at the bus station. I’d swallowed a couple of beta blockers and thought I could feel them hanging out in my stomach like the useless little BBs they were. In fact, I thought they were adding to my weird sense of detachment, like I was somebody else and whoever she was, she couldn’t play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” much less Hindemith’s Third Sonata. I tried to distract myself with a Gossip magazine I’d picked up in the station. It registered somewhere in my brain that on page ten there was a photo of David Montagnier with Julia Roberts. They looked real chummy. But at the moment, I was just praying that a meteor would strike Boston and blow it sky-high before I had to perform. Ziggy, well aware of my problem, kept checking me out with first one eye and then the other. I saw the relief as he decided he didn’t have to worry about any serious competition from me.
    Despite my efforts at slowing down the rotation of the Earth and therefore the passage of time, my turn came. Somebody walked myself out to the piano. I somehow made it through the first section but then I got stuck in a loop. Panic had erased my memory totally and my fingers just kept repeating the same measures over and over. Then there was the blur of the keyboard, the nauseating motion as it pitched and rolled, and finally the familiar head full of fireworks that ended in a blank.
    Ziggy walked off with the twenty-five grand. All I had to show for my final performance was a lump the color and size of an eggplant and the realization that it was over for me. My seatmate on the way back to New York must have thought I was escaping a battering husband because all I did was cry and pop Motrin for the lump. Ten years of struggle and hope and disappointment down the hopper, not to mention having to face that old man with the cigar. I felt like I was standing at the edge of a grave, shoveling dirt on my broken heart. Professor Stein was expecting a report as soon as I got home but I could tell when I heard his voice on the phone that he already knew.
    â€œThank you for trying, Bess,” he said. “You were brave.”
    â€œIs there any point in my showing up for my lesson on Wednesday?” I asked.
    There was a hesitation. “Yes. Let’s talk then.” But I could hear the resignation. He was finished.
    I remembered when my grandmother died, the pain in my chest like a broken rib. I would forget, and then it would clobber me all over again. It’s over for you, Bess. You will never be a concert pianist. It was the never part that killed me. Despite everything, I’d been hanging on to the possibility that one day I’d be rid of the terror and could walk out on a stage free and strong. I was almost surprised that there was no relief, only sorrow and a sickening sense of shame.
    It was raining hard when I set off for the Professor’s